The ontological threat of foreign fighters
| Author | Raphaël Leduc |
| DOI | 10.1177/1354066120948122 |
| Published date | 01 March 2021 |
| Date | 01 March 2021 |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066120948122
European Journal of
International Relations
2021, Vol. 27(1) 127 –149
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1354066120948122
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The ontological threat of
foreign fighters
Raphaël Leduc
Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Switzerland
Abstract
The threat represented by foreign fighters to their home state has rarely materialised,
yet states have increasingly legislated against foreign fighters over the course of the last
300 years. This observation points to the act of legislating as fulfilling some function
other than the protection of the state against a physical threat presented by foreign
fighter returnees. This paper asks what is problematic about foreign-fighter returnees
from the point of view of lawmakers if they do not represent a physical threat? It argues
that returnees generate ontological insecurity on the part of lawmakers. Consequently,
the act of legislating against them serves to reify the identity of individual lawmakers. This
argument is supported using historical case comparison of Westminster parliamentary
debates on foreign fighting. This paper finds that what is at stake in foreign-fighter
legislation is not the physical security of the national state but the ontological security of
lawmakers. These findings point to the need for a shift of the research on foreign fighters
that moves beyond the potential terrorist threat they represent to an understanding of
what they mean for International Relations.
Keywords
Foreign fighters, security, international history, terrorism, discourse, conflict
Introduction
What is problematic about foreign fighters? Tools used by lawmakers to safeguard
against returnees from the post-2010 conflicts in Iraq and Syria vary, ranging from the
Danish model of rehabilitation, the denial of their return favoured in the United Kingdom,
the removal of their citizenship in Australia, as well as their targeted killing on
Corresponding author:
Raphaël Leduc, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Chemin Eugène-Rigot 2A,
Case Postale 1672, Geneve 1211, Switzerland.
Email: raphael.leduc@graduateinstitute.ch
948122EJT0010.1177/1354066120948122European Journal of International RelationsLeduc
research-article2020
Article
128 European Journal of International Relations 27(1)
the battlefield. Regardless of the specific policies, the assumption behind them is that
returnees pose a threat to their home societies. This paper empirically looks at the secu-
rity politics of foreign fighting and how fighters are problematised by lawmakers. It
argues that what is at stake when parliamentarians legislate against foreign fighters is the
individual ontological security of lawmakers themselves, not the physical threat posed
by foreign-fighter returnees to the state. Up to this point, research on foreign fighters has
focused almost exclusively on measuring their threat as potential terrorists as a way of
understanding what, if any, actions should be taken to mitigate the hypothetical security
risks they pose (Braithwaite and Chu, 2018; Byman, 2015; Cragin, 2017; Fejes, 2018;
Hegghammer, 2013; Hegghammer and Nesser, 2015; Leduc, 2016; Malet and Hayes,
2018; Noonan and Khalil, 2014; Tammikko, 2018). Meanwhile, a second strand of
research on foreign fighters has sought to measure their effect on conflict outcomes
(Byman, 2018; Cragin and Stipanovich, 2017; Lindekilde et al., 2016), but no work has
been done on what foreign fighting means for the study of international security. This
paper looks comparatively at different historical instances of foreign fighting to show
that the risk returnees posed at different historical junctures never materialised and then
asks what is problematic about them from the point of view of lawmakers if they do not
pose a physical security threat? The answer this paper proposes to this puzzle is that
under normal politics, lawmakers legislate to affirm their own ontological security
understood in terms of their role and identity as parliamentarians of a specific country.
This answer is an alternative to the idea that democratic lawmakers are mostly motivated
by ‘cynical ends’ (Neal, 2019: 33) such as political survival or the acquisition of extraor-
dinary powers when they engage in security politics.
This paper conducts an historical case comparison of various historical episodes of
foreign fighting and the reaction of Westminster parliamentarians to the phenomenon.
Using a discourse analysis of parliamentary debates, the paper explains why, despite the
lack of strong evidence of a returnee threat, different sets of legislations were enacted to
prevent the return of foreign fighters. By using ontological security, it shows that what is
at stake for legislators when they problematise foreign fighters is their own identity and
their own individual understanding of the institution of the state and the place of indi-
vidual citizens within it. The analysis focuses exclusively on Westminster systems,
focusing on the United Kingdom (UK), but the methods can be applied to other cases of
foreign fighter legislation as well as other security issues in any democratic legislative
system.
The theoretical implications of this paper are important for the study of both interna-
tional security and foreign fighters for two main reasons. First, for the study of interna-
tional security, this paper uses ontological security to bring insights into the dynamics of
identity performance that take place when lawmakers are confronted with security issues.
Second, during the Islamic State’s (IS) apogee in Syria and Iraq, much of the academic
focus on foreign fighters stemmed from the study of terrorism and thus on the threat they
posed as either fighters abroad or terrorists at home. This focus translated itself into
policy making, with the literature on foreign fighters as terrorists-in-waiting appearing in
various policy documents. In many countries, this led to policy that is unlikely to allow
the fighters to demobilise by not allowing them to return home, by criminalising them,
or by letting various local actors handle the foreign fighters. These policies are based on
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